#Franz klammer 1976 innsbruck full#

Klammer almost dies on that run on several occasions with little more than the modern equivalent of a moped helmet, a millimeter of yellow body suit, and happy thoughts separating him from certain doom.

#Franz klammer 1976 innsbruck full#

That is Franz Klammer's gold medal-winning run at the 1976 Olympics, a full hellborne run downhill into the jaws of certain death and still one of the most mindbending sports-related events I have ever seen. Jim McKay was narrating 'The Greatest Moment of the Olympics,' and something had my father excited enough to wake up from the half-coma, half-attentive state he usually spent Saturday afternoons passing in and out of in front of the TV. One weekend early in my childhood my father gestured hurriedly from the couch.

You may not have thought you needed to watch a whole hour on the Iditarod, but by the time you were done Jim McKay had made it very clear to you that you did. What it lacked in instant gratification, the Wide World Of Sports made up for in scope. And then the next would be 24 hours at Le Mans.

One Saturday it might be a powerlifting meet, and then next, the vine jumpers of Vanuatu. It was a tinier sports aquarium then, but in some ways a more multidisciplinary one because on any given Saturday you could turn on the television and have absolutely no clue what you were getting. The model for all sports coverage remains the old ABC Wide World of Sports.